The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles) Book 6

The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles) Book 6

Anne Rice

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In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand - eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms.

Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood - a ruined city under Mongol dominion - and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood.

As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.

the exquisite oval face surrounded by its golden hair and taffeta hood was hers, most definitely, framed exactly as it might have been in those days, and it was she, she whose face had been etched into my fevered soul before and after any Dark Gift had ever been given me. Bianca. She was gone! For less than a second I saw her wide wary eyes, full of vampiric alarm, more urgent and menacing than any human could ever evince, and then the figure was vanished, disappeared from the wood, gone from

leave-the usual regal figure in his familiar crimson robes, climbing into the gondola and giving me his clever wink as the boat took him away. I spent three days, as it turned out, in the house of the most voluptuous available maidens in Venice, sleeping late in the morning, comparing olive skin to blond skin and indulging myself in leisurely examinations of the nether hair of all beauties, distinguishing the more silken from the wiry and more tightly curled. I learned little niceties of

him for you, sweet," said Marius. "And for that, you'll owe me no high crimes, only your gentle forgetfulness of the appetite you have seen tonight in me." For the first time, her courage seemed to waver. Her eyes filled with clear pretty tears. A tiny weariness showed itself in her. She hung her head for a moment. "You know who he is, you know where he lodges, you know that he is in Venice now." "He's a dead man, my beautiful lady," my Master said. I slipped my arm around his neck. I kissed

fanciful the words I spoke. We are immortal. And only one enemy can destroy us-it's the fire that burns in that torch there, or in the rising sun. Sweet to think on it, that when we are at last weary of all this world there is the rising sun." "I am yours, Master." I hugged him close and tried to vanquish him with kisses. He endured them, and even smiled, but he didn't move. But when I broke off, and made a fist of my right hand as if to hit him, which I could never have done, to my amazement he

Heaven. To Heaven that would not have you, and might never. In death, he looked most excellent. I sat beside him. I wiped my mouth, not that there was a drop to wipe. Vampires slobber blood only in motion pictures. Even the most mundane immortal is far too skilled to spill a drop. I wiped my mouth because his sweat was on my lips and on my face, and I wanted it to go away. I admired him, however, that he was big and wondrously hard for all his seeming roundness. I admired the black hair